Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

1840s. The Oregon Trail (US). Travel on the 2,100-mile Trail took off when the missionary, Marcus Whitman, led 1,000 pioneers across the plains in 1843 , and traffic increased every year, culminating in the estimated 40,000 wagon travelers who flocked to the trail in the ‘Gold Rush’ year of 1849. More than 400,000 pioneers would make the trek between the Missouri River and the Pacific coast in the fifteen years before the Civil War; considered one of the largest land migrations in history. The vehicle of choice was the ox or mule drawn Schuttler wagon, which was compact, strong, durable, and less than half the weight of the clunky Conestoga. The wagon box was water-tight for better floatation ability in river-crossings, gaining wagons the name of “prairie schooners”. The primary destination of the Oregon Trail was the fertile Willamette Valley, where the 187-mile-long northward flowing Willamette River joins the great Colombia River 100-miles from the Pacific Ocean. The challenge of the Great Continental Divide, the Rocky Mountains, was diminished when a Scotsman, Robert Stuart of the American Fur Company, learned from Shoshones in 1812 of the South Pass in southwest Wyoming, four hundred miles south of Lemhi Pass (North Pass) between Montana and Idaho taken by Lewis and Clarke, and an easier pass through the Rockies. It was to be another twenty years before Captain Benjamin Bonneville led a wagon train expedition successfully west by that route. Not all the wagon trains travelled to Oregon, as groups branched off after South Pass in Wyoming for the Utah Territory (Great Salt Lake Valley) and some travelled further on to California. The Mormons had fought openly with fellow Missourians during the 1830s because of politico-social differences. Brigham Young, after the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, led a Mormon wagon train to Utah in 1847 and many Mormon trains followed. leading to the Latter-Day Saints settling at Salt Lake City and the extensive Mormon society that exists today. “Christian” religious extremism, bigotry and sectarian conflicts were all too common, and quite ridiculous in the 1800s.

Fig. 25.

The Oregon Trail in 1850s

Public Domain

The death rate was considerable on the Oregon trail and one in ten migrants did not reach their destination. While some died from violence and accidents the overwhelming majority succumbed from diseases – particularly from cholera in 1849 and 1852 along the trail. “For 450 miles the Platte [River Valley in Nebraska and Wyoming] offered the pioneers everything they required in an otherwise arid, hostile environment – clear navigation points

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